Do parents talk to their sons?

[Theblacksheepandme]

I have read so much and have become educated more and more on what to look out for by reading the relationships threads. I pass a lot of this information to my 14 year old daughter. I hope by educating her on what to watch out for and learning about red flags it will help her for future relationships.

This made me wonder how many parents and caregivers feel it is important to talk to their boys on the importance of respecting girls and women? Teaching them what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. Asking if their friends acted inappropriately would they say something?

If parents had these discussions with their sons would it lessen the amount of toxic men in the World? Women have a genuine fear for their safety. Are teenage boys even being made aware of this?

I am not looking for an argument and I am certainly not pointing the finger at parents of boys. I am wondering what we can do as a society to change the behaviours of teenage boys?

And girls can be just as abusive as boys. DS is struggling with ex girlfriend who judged him by her own poor behaviour. He became fed up of being excluded from social events that she didn’t want him attending. He wasn’t happy with her escalating drug use but has been trying to support her while she tries to quit. But every time she has the opportunity she slips back into again. She is now the ex but they still spend a lot of time talking. And she still tris to control who he talks to. Hopefully he is learning lessons and is slowly extricating himself but he is too nice and has too much respect for her to block and move on. I understand but I have to tread carefully re drug abuse since I seem to be the only parent aware of the problem. Many of the parents I know whose teenagers are using wouldn’t believe me if I passed on the info. And DS may have to deal with the backlash. So for the time being I am keeping my council.

I definitely plan to talk to DS about this. He's only 10 now, but the other week I had first 'discussion' (very brief) about pornography - he didn't know what it was, and he hadn't seen any. I mean, it's fairly unlikely - some of his peers will have phones, but I don't think they can bring them to school. I will keep up this discussion as he gets older. I understand men looking at porn to some extent, but I think it's bad for a lot of reasons when boys get to know porn before they get to know women as human beings.

We have talked about feminism and he's come to understand various gender inequalities and unfairnesses quite well.

As he gets older I want to talk to him about making sure he's not blind to relationship imbalances - I feel bad as ultimately DH and I have failed to model gender-equitable parenting; DH didn't do 'nothing' when the kids were younger, but he should have done more and I should have asked for more and frustratingly I only really realised later what I should have asked. But I want to teach DS that he shouldn't be waiting for a partner to ask!

Of course they do.

They talk about consent, respecting womens rights, helping make women feel safer in their actions and how their behaviour can effect women emotionally and physically

chainoverreaction
Have a look at this and then tell me women don't live in fear.

www.mumsnet.com/service/notification/redirector/watched/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4452592-Young-woman-murdered-running-what-sort-of-world-is-this?msgid=114196204

I don't live in fear, and it doesn't control where I exercise.

However, many women do live in fear, of both danger from strangers & those known to them.

Ashling's murder is horrific, without question and male violence perpetrated on women is a huge worldwide endemic problem.

I think it's starting with the fathers and DH when you have sons.

Most of our friendship group parents of teenage sons are all 45-60 year olds, they have a very different views and grew up in an era when sexism was accepted, porn is normal. The trick is to re-wire and educate them, my own comes out with corkers on occasion and my own teenage sons correct him.

Until we teach that generation our sons will continue to learn poor behaviours.

In my family, my sons are taught absolutely respect, right from wrong, to call out others and everything I hope makes them decent young men.

RoyKentsChestHair
Yes. I talk to my boys a lot about feminism, respect, healthy relationships etc.

Without being a dick about their dad, I have been honest about the reasons behind our marriage breakdown and the inequality that exists from me being a SAHM while they were young, about how to balance a relationship and home so that nobody is disadvantaged.

Hardest thing I’ve done is to finish a 9 year relationship with a man I adored because he showed some toxic traits that didn’t model the kind of relationships I want my kids to have as adults, or the kind of men I want them to grow up to be. It is killing me daily to be separated from him, but it would hurt a lot more to see my boys behaving in a misogynistic or aggressive way to their future partners, so I have had to end things. I’m trying to walk the walk as well as talking the talk, but they can also see how hard it is sometimes to just walk away from a bad relationship because nobody is all good or all bad.

I think what you did was amazing.

@applecrumbleforteaagain

I think it's starting with the fathers and DH when you have sons.

Most of our friendship group parents of teenage sons are all 45-60 year olds, they have a very different views and grew up in an era when sexism was accepted, porn is normal. The trick is to re-wire and educate them, my own comes out with corkers on occasion and my own teenage sons correct him.

Until we teach that generation our sons will continue to learn poor behaviours.

In my family, my sons are taught absolutely respect, right from wrong, to call out others and everything I hope makes them decent young men.

I see this on here quite often and it is honestly an excuse, and it isn't true.

I am 54. As is dh.
My father is nearly 80.
My grandfather was born in 1899.

My grandfather was a man who had the utmost respect for his wife, and I learnt a lot from his treatment of her.
He was a man of his time, so he didn't do housework etc, and my Granny was SAHM and would have loved a job.
But he did respect and love her. he woudl have been shocked and appalled by the sexist behaviour and lack of consent etc that is common today.

My parents were young and married in the early 1960s.
They are not sexist. My father wouldn't have dreamed of talking down to or about my mum. They were modern for their times, but really? That was 1960, and they knew that this was wrong.

You think that 45-60 year olds in 2022 grew up in a sexist time when this was 'normal'

It really wasn't. My friends and I did not grow up in 1950s homes, I was a teenager in 1980s. You are a whole generation (or two) out.

This generation of parents really cannot use that excuse. My parents were of that sexist generation and even then many of them were already past that.
Not perfect, but respect definitely there.

You know what is really ‘fun’.

The ‘boys will be boys’.
The ‘oh boys are boisterous’.
The ‘you will grow up to be strong/big’.

Why not kind/understanding? I’ve literally never heard it. I’m starting to get a bit of a complex about it because I’ve got two boys and I’m petrified of the world they’re growing up into and the external influences, small but constant about how they’re endlessly powerful and strong and can be excused because they have a penis?!

I talked to my older son about that sort of thing very often (I’ve never had one big talk but it crops up in conversation).

He was still shocked at the me too information. I think the statistic was 96% of women had received unwanted attention. He was surprised and I said it was probably 99% and described the shouting, bum punching etc I had had over the years.

He’s also run past problems with me regarding girl friends and I’ve described how to be thoughtful or not to dump by text or whatever!

• pinching!

Of course we do! I have 2 sons
Honestly all the way

@chainoverreaction it's not about specifically living in fear. It's planning your routes, not wearing headphones, making sure someone knows where you are going and who you are meeting. It's ensuring you aren't left alone on a night out, keeping your drink close so you don't get spiked. All these little things we do automatically and teach our daughters to do to lessen the chance of being raped or killed. Most men wouldn't even think about these things, let alone implement them on a daily basis.

I think even when young boys have a female friend they get teased. Is she your girlfriend? Parents saying things like that to their sons is telling them they can't be friends with the opposite sex.

@chainoverreaction I haven’t been in our forest since my dog died.. whilst I’m certainly not quaking in my boots it is present in my thoughts around where I’m going or what I’m doing.

With the amount of hardcore porn they are able to watch on their phones I really think it's very important for parent to talk to their children about relationships respect and consent. It's very worrying that their first experience of sex these days is mostly watching porn and a lot of it violent too. They may think this is a normal loving relationship when in reality it's far from it

@wishingitwasspring

I have 2 adult sons and I had lots of conversations with them about respect, consent, and being 'gentlemen'. (And I make no apology for the slightly sexist and ageist comment, you know what I mean)

I also talked to them about looking after themselves.. that some women can be very manipulative and nasty.

The contraceptive talks were as much about keeping themselves safe as their women friends.

This is key I think. That people should respect other people and no adult has a right to make another adult live their life a certain way. This applies both ways.

DS is only just 5 so we don't go into anything too deep at the moment.

We do stress the power of the word "No" and "Stop".

If he's playing with someone and they say stop, then he has to stop and vice versa. The school champion this too.
We do play quite roughly at home (climbing over each other, catching each other, tickle fights etc) but the minute anyone says no or stop, we stop. I think this is how we will tackle the idea of consent too. Stop means stop and no means no.

We also talk about how sometimes people don't realise how strong they are so they have to be careful that when they are playing with someone, that the other person is okay with the type of play so for example, we were playing catchy jail the other day at home and DS had suggested the catcher threw the bad guys onto the sofa. Since I knew that it would end up with someone getting hurt, I changed it to the catcher had to put the bad guy in the circle on the carpet. Didn't position it as "I'm teaching you and as your parent it's my way or the high way" but more like I was making a suggestion how to play and why. The idea is that when he's at school and coming up with rules for games, he is happy to listen to what others think and understand that what he would be happy with, others might not be.

No idea if this will work...he's our first child so we'll have to see.

Tbf I've only known lovely boys brought up by thoughtful parents single or married....,

The weird ones I would assume have been brought up by very misogynistic fathers! Domestic violence, drugs, alcohol etc dysfunctional dynamics

I have 2 sons and the teens are all lovely and know about consent, respect etc

But they do tend to reject the odd balls who then get more isolated and weird as time goes by through secondary school... I know a few who I think wow what are they going to be like by the time they are 17/18/19 😱

Yes I talk to my ds about how he should treat girls/women respect,consent, etc. I also speak to my dd about how she should expect to be treated and to speak up if she ever felt frightened or vulnerable.
But it's not just horrible men out there alot of women attack men aswell so both boys and girls need speaking to about what is right and wrong.

I remember a great programme on Channel 4 back in 2014 where a school allowed Goedele Liekens to teach sex education. It really showed boys views of girls was based on pornography that they watched.